Brenda Umana Daniels 17 July 2014 English 3 Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America Important; that’s the first word that comes to mind after the reading of this novel. Ehrenreich’s writing in Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America is very powerful, brutally honest, and extremely engaging. She gained so much from her experiences, and we gained even more when reading them. Although she cheated on few occasions, she gives a clear insight into what poverty is, and how a life in a low pay, heavy workforce is not a life at all. This project was supposed to give her a better understanding on how the other half lived. How people living off welfare did it, and how they managed to live on such low salaries. She was going to leave …show more content…
She went into it with some money, a car, and three rules. These rules being, “Rule one, obviously enough, was that I could not, in my search for jobs, fall back on any skills derived from my education or usual work-not that there were a lot of want ads for essayists anyway. Two, I had to take the highest-paying job that was offered me and do my best to hold it; no Marxist rants or sneaking off to read novels in the ladies' room. Three, I had to take the cheapest accommodations I could find, at least the cheapest that offered an acceptable level of safety and privacy, though my standards in this regard were hazy and, as it turned out, prone to deterioration over time” (Page 9). With these rules in place, she was to start her new life, and although I do think her experiences were significant, I think she could’ve gone in …show more content…
The e-mails and phone messages addressed to my former self come from a distant race of people with exotic concerns and far too much time on their hands” (Page 25). She lands a job in some restaurants, and the long hours, and treatment by management and costumers begin to take a toll on her. She begins to realize that jobs she once considered for the “unskilled” to be very difficult. When Ehreneich has to start making ends meet, she starts to see how good she used to have it, and how much she took advantage of it. She soon gets so sucked into this new life that she has made for herself that her thoughts are occupied of only: rent, food, and